Part 7: In Which You Fail And Get Right Back On The Horse

****This is an 8 part series about goals setting, developing goals, and how to achieve them that I will post every Monday in December and most of January. Click here to read part 1 , part 2, part 3, Part 4, part 5, or part 6.

Bombed. Defeated. Flopped. Lost out. Failure, that horrible seven letter f word that no on likes to hear. Have you failed any of your goals yet? Don’t get discouraged. It is really easy to, but because you failed it doesn’t mean you’re a failure. There is a difference: one means that you tried something new and didn’t work the other means you didn’t try at all.

So you failed. What did you learn? To understand what went wrong you need break down what happened and ask yourself a few things. First what went wrong? Sometimes failure comes from your approach. Where could you change things? Maybe when it is time for plan B.

Next look at the goal itself. Was it unrealistic? Remember Rome wasn’t built in a day. That is just impossible task. Goals need to be SMART. They need to be specific, timely, and realistic.

Sometimes goals fail not because they weren’t well planned out, but because it wasn’t something that you really wanted to do or have out grown. It’s hard to motivate yourself to go after what you don’t want, but why should you?

Don’t get discouraged. Winston Churchill once said “success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” Everyone f ails at some point or another. Look around you. Everything that we see and touch was invented by someone. Do you think they got it right the first time? Everything in life is about trial and failure and just because something doesn’t turn out right the first time doesn’t mean it wont on the second, third, fourth, or seven hundredth sixty-third time

Remind yourself why you are going after this. What was your original motivation. Focus on that and use it to get you enthusiastic about your goal again.

Allow yourself some slack. If this is something you really want don’t deny yourself the joy of accomplishing the goal because of a set back or two.